The Secret Citizen (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 3)

by Kyle Andrews

  When she had gone as high as she could go, Rose walked into the apartment that would have the best view of the Garden and she started to pry a board from one of the windows.

  Paul remained in the doorway behind her, tapping his finger against the gun in his hand. He had his back to the window, with no interest in seeing even a glimpse of what Rose was looking for.

  With one board out of the way, Rose could have seen out the window without any trouble at all, but as she stepped closer to the window she kept her eyes on the board just below the opened area. She asked herself if she really wanted to do this, and of course the answer was 'no'. But she had to.

  After taking a deep breath, Rose shifted her eyes upward and looked out at the scene before her. Nothing that she could have imagined would have prepared her for what she saw. Consciously knowing that there would be dead bodies and actually seeing those bodies were two different things. There was a feeling that washed over her that words could not describe as she stared at those people—her people—who had fallen into twisted shapes on the ground.

  With the number of people that she was looking at, one might think that they would all begin to blend together. Rather than people, they should become one large image. A scene. But that wasn't what happened. Each body that Rose saw was its own crime. Each was the lifeless shell of someone that she had existed with, eaten with, walked with, spoken to. There was no blending together. There was no taking in the overall picture. It wasn't one event that had taken place that day, it was dozens. Each fallen person represented a choice that someone had made to pull a trigger and take the life of an unarmed human being whose only crime was the desire to live their own life freely.

  It took Rose a while to exhale that breath that she had taken. She held it in her lungs until it burned in her chest, screaming to get out. When it finally did, she expected to hear herself scream or cry or something, but she didn't make a sound.

  “Rose,” Paul said, but he had nothing to follow it with.

  She blinked, but closing her eyes didn't stop her from seeing those bodies.

  At first, she didn't even see the rest of what was going on. It took her some time to realize that HAND was still out there. Each officer was stepping over the body of someone that they had helped to murder, moving closer and closer to the building. They moved slowly and carefully, as though anyone in the Garden had the resources to fight back. This wasn't battle, it was extermination.

  Rose felt a hand on her shoulder. She knew that it was probably Paul, but she didn't know that for sure. She should have had her guard up. She should have reacted to that touch by jumping back or preparing to defend herself, but she didn't. She just kept her eyes on the window.

  “We should go,” Paul told her. “You've seen what you needed to see.”

  “They're moving closer.”

  “I know.”

  “There could still be people in there.”

  “I know. But... Even if we had the skills needed to fight those people, we don't have the weapons for it. We don't have the manpower.”

  “So we walk away?”

  “We accept what is. We absorb it. Then we use it to fuel our next move. To become what we need to become after this day is over.”

  Rose nodded and took a step back from the window. Paul was right. She looked down at the ground, seeing her own footprints in the dust and she forced herself to accept her situation. She allowed what she had just seen to sink in and become a part of her, rather than sit on top of her like a rock. There was no way to accomplish this quickly, but she had to at least try to think rationally.

  Try as she might to be as collected as Paul, Rose's rage was overshadowing everything else. She felt like moving back to the window, busting out the glass with the butt of her gun, and picking off HAND officers one by one as they tried to invade her home. She wanted to destroy them. She wanted those who survived to see her face in their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  These feelings nearly got the best of her, but then Rose looked at Paul and saw that he wasn't a coward who wanted to run. He wasn't uncaring. He wasn't stupid. What he was saying was what made the most sense. Rose wasn't a sniper. She might be able to pick off a couple of officers at close range, but taking out a target from a distance, using a weapon that she had never even fired before was a daydream, not a plan. She'd have better luck jumping up and down, waving her arms in the air and yelling to the officers to look at her.

  She knew this, but she hated it. There should have been something that she could have done to help her people or to avenge those deaths, but there was nothing. She could grab all of the weapons she wanted and talk big to whoever would listen, but at the end of the day, she was powerless to stop what had already been set in motion. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. It just was.

  Rose walked out of that room with weapons in hand and Paul by her side. She had no idea where she was going to go or what she was going to do next. All she knew was that in the days, weeks and months to come, she was going to prepare for the next time this happened.

  When they walked out of the building, Rose and Paul stayed low and moved quickly. They made sure that they weren't being followed as they went from doorway to doorway and alley to alley. Eventually, they had to stash their newly acquired weapons away. They couldn't very well walk with them through the more populated city streets, after all.

  They found an old building that was in danger of falling over at any moment. When they were sure that nobody was inside, Paul found a hole in the wall that was big enough and they stored their supplies, covering the hole with an old cabinet that barely stayed in one piece as they moved it. They double checked to make sure that there were no hints to point people to their stash, and then they walked back into the world.

  They moved away from the abandoned streets and buildings and moved amongst the normal everyday citizens of the city, pretending to be one of them but on that day more than ever before, Rose felt as though she and those people existed on entirely different planets. None of them knew what she knew or felt what she felt.

  They walked through Rose's own neighborhood. The place where she had grown up. The place where her sister and niece still lived. When they passed Daph's building, Rose glanced up and saw her sister standing in the window, looking out across the city.

  There was a moment when Daph looked right at Rose. Their eyes locked, but Rose felt nothing.

  32

  Volunteers worked hard to clear the entrance to the Garden from the outside, while members of Freedom worked to clear the way from within. They all knew that the walls could come crashing down around them at any moment, but they didn't slow down.

  Outside, HAND officers were slaughtering those members of Freedom who dared to attempt escape. Names kept pouring in, but Justin couldn't hear them. He couldn't allow the details and emotions of the day to sink in until he was out of there, otherwise he might not be able to move at all.

  The triage patients that he had seen in that other section of the hospital did not survive the raid of the Garden. Those who weren't killed by crumbling walls were taken out by HAND officers once the raid began.

  The plants which had been feeding members of Freedom throughout the city for years burned, despite the best efforts of the gardeners, including Daniel who fought those flames to the end. He won the battle, only to be killed once HAND finally stormed the building. But he would not be forgotten and his efforts were not in vain. Daniel did manage to get a supply of seeds out of the Garden shortly after the attack began. His flowers would bloom again.

  HAND officers were already in the building by the time an opening was cleared, just large enough for Justin to slip through. He wanted to stay and fight, but Aaron pushed him out.

  Ammo didn't need to be pushed. He dove through the opening even as Justin was still squirming his way through.

  “Go! Run!” Aaron ordered Justin, as soon as he was through the hole.

  Justin did as he was told and ran as far and as fast as h
e could through the sewers, listening to the sounds of HAND vehicles driving through the streets above. He kept moving until he was sure that he wasn't being followed. He left behind those members who were still rushing to clear the doorway, but he had no choice. The greater good. The ends justifying the means. All of the common sayings told him that his conscience should be clear, but he would always hate himself for leaving them behind.

  There were explosions and gunshots in the distance, but they were all behind Justin. He stayed hidden until after dark and then he and Ammo made their way through the streets, toward his apartment. Then there was only silence.

  An hour after he reached his apartment, there was a knock on the door. He opened it, not knowing who he hoped to see or what he hoped would happen.

  Marti stood in the hallway outside his door, eyes red from crying, and when she saw Justin she just stood there, staring at him.

  He pulled her inside the apartment and put his arms around her, holding onto her as though she could have been an illusion that would fade away if he didn't hold her tightly enough.

  After a minute or two, Marti tried to speak, saying, “I...” but she had no idea how to finish her sentence.

  “It's gone,” Justin told her. “They're all gone.”

  “All of them?”

  “I...” Justin started, but he was the one who didn't know how to finish this time. He couldn't make himself tell her that he'd left them all behind.

  “What do we do now?” Marti asked him, moving on to Ammo who was demanding attention from her.

  Justin turned toward the window, looking out into the dark and quiet night. He thought about the question for a moment, not knowing how he was supposed to carry on with what he had to do. His first instinct was to tell Marti that he didn't know what they should do next, but that wasn't what came out of his mouth.

  “We make them pay,” Justin told her. There was no anger to his voice, just a coldness that surprised even him.

  Marti moved to his side and looked out the window with him. It all appeared so normal, and Justin wondered how people could just go on with their lives, knowing what had happened only blocks away.

  “We make them pay,” Marti quietly agreed.

  ҂

  Justin had to go to school the next day and act as though nothing had happened. He had to pretend that everything was perfectly normal, if not better than normal. Everyone was talking about the raid on the Hate compound. Those who cheered the deaths of the people they considered to be terrorists did so openly. But then there were those students who remained quiet. Some looked haunted while others simply looked at those who cheered and seemed disgusted by the celebration of so many deaths.

  Justin smiled the whole time. He was sure that someone would notice that he was putting on an act. He worried that he would break down at any moment, but he didn't. He pulled it off and everyone thought that he was as happy as a man could be. Of course, most of the population was being dosed with mood enhancers in their supplements, so Justin didn't exactly have to stretch the limits of his acting abilities.

  In the days that followed, the final tally of who survived and who didn't started to drip in. The entrance to the Garden was mostly cleared just as HAND officers were rushing into the area. Aaron was injured, but he managed to make it out of the building. Simon dragged him out of there kicking and screaming, blood pouring down the side of his face. Tracy took them back to the Campus, while the other survivors of the Garden were scattered to the winds, taking shelter in other bases or lying low in their government-approved lives. Some were too scared to associate with Freedom after that, but most were more determined than ever to see this war through.

  Remarkably, Amanda didn't die that day. The woman must have had nine lives, because she and some of the other hospital patients had been cleared out as soon as the drone strike hit the Garden. Justin wasn't exactly sure how it all happened, but she lived through it and was taken somewhere else for treatment. Justin was happy to have Libby's mother survive and to know that she was in good hands, but he would never see her again. In fact, he wouldn't see a lot of people again. He would never step foot in another base or eat a fresh salad. If he was going to infiltrate HAND, he couldn't risk being seen in one of those bases. He needed to be the perfect citizen.

  18 Months Later...

  33

  “I'm joined in the studio by long-time senator and current presidential nominee, Fax Larson. Welcome to the show, Senator.”

  The host of the morning talk show was an old man, and respected by all of the other journalists on his network. To Justin, he looked like he was going to fall asleep at any moment.

  “Thank you for having me,” Senator Larson replied with a sly smile and a nod. He had to be the most neatly groomed man that Justin had ever seen, with the most well tailored suit he'd ever seen. Even his tie somehow managed to look tailored.

  “Senator... Here we are. Election Day.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “I wouldn't put it that way. I'm eager to see what happens, but I believe that the people will make the right decision either way.”

  “And you believe that you are the right decision?”

  “If I didn't, I wouldn't be running.”

  The host nodded and sorted through his notes, trying to figure out what he wanted to say next. This took several seconds, which were like minutes on live TV, filled with nothing but silence between the men.

  “I want to talk about your infamous Restructuring Plan, if we could,” the host told him.

  “Sure.”

  “It failed.”

  Larson smiled and nodded, saying, “To put it bluntly. But I wouldn't necessarily call it a failure.”

  “You pushed for it. It didn't pass. How is that not a failure?”

  “Well, the point of the plan was always to make the system work better for the people. Now, a year and a half or two years ago, I didn't see any of the progress that I wanted to see in that area. People were being given food that they couldn't tolerate or which they were allergic to, and there was nothing they could do to change their shopping list. That was unacceptable to me.”

  “What's changed?”

  “A lot has changed. Everything has, really. With the adoption of the MeID system, which is launching today as a matter of fact, we will be able to tailor shopping lists to each specific person. We will know their food requirements even better than they do. And it doesn't even stop there. Medical histories. Work and school history... We have never been able to create a database that could encompass everything that makes a person who they are. Now, we have a system for that.”

  “Your slogan for the Restructuring Plan was 'Power in the Hands of the People.' Do you think that the MeID system lives up to that?”

  “This is the ultimate fulfillment of that idea. This isn't just putting power in the hands of the people and leaving them to fend for themselves. This program takes the guesswork out of life. With the MeID program, you don't even have to wonder about the possibility of genetic defects in your children, because we will be able to tell you how compatible you and your mate are before you even go on your first date.”

  “Some have called this program an invasion of privacy. Citizens have protested its implementation.”

  “A small but vocal minority, but we have support from the larger majority. If we didn't, I don't think I would be up here, praising a program that was developed by my opposition.”

  “But you're the man who talks about giving power to the people. Doesn't that vocal minority deserve to be heard?”

  “Absolutely. And they have been heard.”

  “But not in the senate.”

  “Right,” Larson nodded. He thought for a moment before he said, “Look, those people can speak for themselves. I don't want to insult them by claiming to speak for them. And it's not my job to speak for the people. My job is to figure out what is best for the people and make that happen.”

  The host nod
ded and flipped through more notes before saying, “Croy Fisker.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have we done everything that we can to make sure that the sort of racism and hatred that led to his death is not allowed to continue?”

  “We have certainly tried.”

  “But we had a report come in just last week, saying that supplement supplies are down another three percent in minority neighborhoods. Is this just a coincidence?”

  “Unfortunately, supplies were down in a lot of areas due to a contaminated shipment.”

  “Contaminated by Hate?”

  “It was an isolated incident and those responsible have been taken into custody. And those citizens who require supplement refills will receive them. We, the entire government, will make sure that they are taken care of.”

  “That is nice, Senator, but we have had Hate attacks all over the city in the past year and we haven't seen a major strike against their group since the fall of the Garden.”

  Hearing someone on television use the name of Justin's old base still gave him the creeps. There was obviously no reason for the name to be a secret anymore, but every time it was spoken in public, Justin was reminded of that day. It had been a year and a half, but it seemed like yesterday to him.

  “We are doing everything in our power to stop the spread of Hate and to figure out where they are operating from. When I'm elected, I plan to create a special task force dedicated to this very purpose. I'm surprised that one hasn't been created already.”

  On final count, an estimated one hundred and thirty-two members of Freedom were killed that day. Twenty-seven of them were children. When the news reported the story, they claimed that Hate leaders had locked the children in one of the interior rooms, using them as human shields between themselves and the HAND officers who were trying to save the kids. They claimed that when the building was infiltrated, Hate set off an incineration charge, burning their own children alive. It was a disgusting picture for them to paint and it went a long way in helping the authorities make their case against Hate, but of course it was a lie.